Friday, November 17, 2006

College Football Live-Comment Tailgate

I'm off to Gainesville for the weekend -- you're a REAL fan if you fly in to watch the games against the 1-AA patsies (ugh) -- so I'm opening up the usual CFB Live-Comment action early, because I likely won't be online Saturday. Have at it throughout the day, and I'll try to check in after the Florida game during the day's REAL game (OSU-Mich). Have at it and have a great weekend.

Hey, Florida called over 40 teams to schedule them for this weekend, even offered over $1M to come play at the Swamp.

We contacted Army, Navy, Middle Tennessee State, Temple, etc to play 1 game at the Swamp without a return date.

The only D-IA team that bit was UAB and they demanded a return home date.

We could have aimed higher, but looking at our schedule to begin the season would you have wanted to sign a Miami, Louisville, or Oregon after looking at a schedule that contained Tennessee, Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina (Spurrier's emotional return), and FSU?

Oh well should be nice to see the backups play before FSU. All being said and done UF will have played 10 bowl teams this season. VEry few teams can lay a claim to that.

First for atleast another week or so its I-AA not 1-AA. We will soon be known as Football Championship Subdivison, cause us patsies decide a champion on the field.

Second, when will the media bashing of I-AA stop? What more do we need to do? My New Hampshire Wildcats went into Northwestern and showed them how the games played. Richmond won at Duke (Yea I know...Duke) Montana State beat up on Colorado then proceeded to lose to a Div II opponent, shows how low Colorado has fallen.

Please lets start showing respect for the highest level of College Playoff Football.

Anyone else find it interesting that ESPN.com voters now think Michigan is going to beat Ohio State, when earlier this week the majority was firmly for tOSU? It's amazing what Bo's death does for perception. Do you think some people feel guilty about picking against UM now?

I think there's a big difference between Dungy's son and Bo Schembechler. Pro players aren't going to go out and draw inspiration from their coach's teenaged kid committing suicide. College players WILL be motivated to win one for their team, their fan base, their school, and the most celebrated coach in the school's history.

You can defend playing UCf only because of their record last year. Who knew that they would revert to their old ways. However I just wish they would have had a bye week before the FSU game. Id rather be safe than sorry and I pray we don't have any injuries.

My cousin is going to the OSU/UM game. SHe went to law school at Um and her boss went to OSU so fley flew in. She is convinced the blue will win on the basis of henne's arm, but after watching the video for Chad Henne is a fucking joke on the dead schembechler's myspace page has me thinking otherwise. I want OSU to win only because I think that UF/OSU would be a great championship game. Well that and I have money on OSU covering and the gators for the over.

I think that USC and UF's schedules are about the same. The gators have a much tougher conference schedule but the condoms have a tougher nonconference one. USC's big games were CAL, ND, Arkansas, Nebraska and Maybe UCLA or Oregon. The Gators had LSU, TENN, AUB, UGA, FSU, and possibly USC. MAybe it is a wash but I think the level of play is better in the sec which makes the USC dominance over ARK impressive. Still look at our respective losses. Oregon state? cmon at least we lost to a team that was in the championship talk. OH yeah and we still have to play arkansas. How can we not be ranked ahead of USC.

You can't help but play in your conference. USC went out of their way to schedule tough games. Florida didn't. Hell, they beat the #5 team in the country by 36. Unless USC loses, there's no way they don't go to the title game.

Michigan's offense will put up enough points. Their defense is what will shock and amaze fans in Columbus. OSU scores 10 or less in meaningful time (i.e. - if they're down by 21 with 5 minutes to go, they may score a garbage TD... but that's it.)

Wow Dan, you need to visit for better games than Southern Miss and Western Carolina? And didn't you come down for Wyoming last year? It is possible to find tickets to games like LSU, Bama, and South Carolina. I promise.

1:Rutgers if they win out. It was a tough decision between them and the rematch but in the end, I hate Michigan and the Manninghams annoy me. It's not a good reason but it's a reason. So there.

2: Michigan. We aren't definitively sure who's better since they lost by the standard 3 point home field advantage. So a rematch. Blah. Why couldn't the terrorists have taken out the horseshoe and Big House instead?

3:USC but only if they whip their last 3 and beat Notre Dame badly like Michigan did. Otherwise give it to Michigan.

Everyone else: No.

Arkansas proved they're not as good as USC so no.

Florida could have 3 losses and the SEC is overrated in my opinion this year.

Notre Dame: Abolutely not! And I'm an Irish fan. We don't need to see them get humiliated by Ohio St. again.

2: Michigan. We aren't definitively sure who's better since they lost by the standard 3 point home field advantage. So a rematch. Blah. Why couldn't the terrorists have taken out the horseshoe and Big House instead?

I'd say the opposite: it seems to me that OSU had the (much?) better team out there. OSU made several mistakes; UM played mistake-free ball and still lost. I'm not saying UM sucks: they hung close and an extra bounce their way and they win it. But I'd say 4 times out of 5 OSU wins.

OSU total points given up this season: 125 (12 games)UM total points given up this season: 175 (12 games)WVA total points given up this season: 184 (10 games)UL total points given up this season: 150 (9 games)

So OSU in 12 games has given up fewer than WVU in 10 and Louisville in 9. UM in 12 games has given up fewer than WVU in 10 ... has 25 more points than Louisville but the Cardinals still have 3 more games to tally.

My off-the-cuff top... as many as are relevant at this point1 OSU2 USC (theyve earned it in the aggregate)3 Michigan (They're easily the #2 team if the #1 team were anyone other than OSU. That might not be fair, but then the BCS never pretended to be fair...)4 Florida (If you want to disparage UF for SoS, don't make fun of playing a 1-AA school; instead, talk about how the SEC kinda sucks all of a sudden.)5 ND6 Arkansas7 Louisville8 WVU

The top five should only be those that still have a shot at the National Championship (sorry UM, if you can't win your conference, you can't win the National Championship; don't like it? become an Independent):

1 - Ohio State2 - USC3 - Florida4 - Notre Dame5 - Arkansas

Since Arkansas will lose to LSU next week and then take out Florida in the SEC title game, ND-USC next week is, in effect, another National Championship Semifinal (provided, of course, if USC wins, that they can beat UCLA the following week, which won't matter, because they won't win).

A Quality win for USC? Against a team who lost last week to Arizona, and was blown out by Tennessee?

Despite that, Cal is still ranked. And still #1 Pac-10 offense, held to only 7 pts (other 2 pts were a safety).

That's a quality win in both human and computer eyes.

As already noted by Troy, SEC is starting to hurt perception-wise. Kentucky barely beat LA-Monroe. Auburn struggled against Alabama. LSU struggled against Ole Miss (OLE MISS?!?). Even the Arkansas-Miss State game was closer than expected.

I'm not saying the SEC isn't worthy, but I think right now conditions favor USC.

The SEC seems to look a litte better now, don't they. IMO USC's SoS dosen't matter much when you lose to an UNRANKED Oregon St. team. You have to beat the weak teams too. But the voters and computers are always bias towards USC and they will probably be there.

USC lost by two to OSU in an upset. That has an "Any Given Saturday" feel to it, and voters could rationalize that probably 4 out of 5 times USC wins that game.

The problem for Arkansas is that they got spanked. Now, I'm the first person to argue (and I have) that margin of victory for the first couple of games of the season isn't all that important. However, the voters will penalize Arkansas for that.

And just like it'd be tough to put ND in the National Championship over Michigan, it'd be tough to put Arkansas in over USC.

Florida has a better chance than Arkansas to get in, but they need LSU to roll over next week to Arkansas. And I suspect they won't.

...ok, yeah, I know. In other ACC News, Miami will almost certainly be locked out of a bowl this season unless they can pull off a major upset vs. BC next week.

And for the love of the football, you cannot tell me that USC deserved to be move ahead of Florida for beating an Oregon team that was overrated to begin with and just lost again tonight, and a Cal team that has never beaten USC, nor ever will beat USC, because they always choke against USC. USC hasn't shown me anything yet this season, except that its better to be lucky then good.

I think maybe I could rank UF above USC if I hadn't gone to most the UF games this year. I swear, this year's team isn't any better than the past 4 versions--more talented maybe, but not better--so it's really hard for me to sit here and say UF deserves the national championship game. If USC loses, then yeah, maybe we deserve a shot at OSU more than Michigan deserves another one, but... I don't know.

If we manage to beat FSU and Arkansas, and ND beats USC, I say the BCS comes down to something like .000001 between Michigan and Florida. Or hell, maybe it could be .0001 between USC, Michigan, and Florida for #2 and the powers that be will say: this means we need a playoff.

All those people who criticized WV-Louisville for their game and the lack of defense better not be praising the Michigan-OSU for the offensive explosion. Those two games went the same way. If you say WV-Louisville was bad D then you have to say the same about Mich-OSU.

Here's hoping ND knocks off USC because I'm sick of USC in the title game.

And shame on Florida for running up the score in their game. Passing in the 4th quarter when up by 50 points?!?!?! Meyer should know better. As Easterbrook would say, the football gods were displeased. Karma's a bitch and its going to catch up with Florida either next week or in the SEC championship. Hope it was worth it.

You do know they crushed Arkansas, right? Granted, first game of the season ... and with a different cast of characters for the Razorbacks. But they won.

As for 'they always beat Cal', well, you could make the same argument for Ohio State. Should yesterday's game not count since the Buckeyes always beat Michigan?

There's a reason the computers have USC so high, guys. Computers don't work on reputation.

I can understand why there's a couple biases against them here. We're sick of them, for one. And they're west coast, for two. And finally, they're not the SEC, for three. But right now they look like the team that's most deserving. And until that changes, you're going to need to get used to that idea.

Ken, I realize you are biased and all... but it will be the mockery of all mockeries if somehow ND ends up ranked ahead of Michigan and plays for the national title. Actually it would be pretty funny seeing them lose to OSU something like 50-7.

If this were in August, no one would care. What the hell. I dont get it. You can't start kneeling the ball in the 3rd quarter.

Actually, by dad wondered why we didn't just kick some field goals on 2nd or 3rd down when we got in decent range, to work out some of those kicking problems we've been having. I think something like that shows a lot less respect for a team than actually playing football against them.

Regardless of whether or not Michigan is the second best team in the country (and they are by a huge margin), they just lost the right to play in the title game, which is fine by me. The loser of the title game will likely be #3 in my book behind Michigan.

None of what I said has anything to do with my ladder rankings, as those are completely unbiased. This is my bias showing based on what I've seen. Remember, rankings don't necessarily resemble who's really better, merely who is having a better year. I think Michigan demolishes whomever they play in the Rose Bowl.

I'm sick of this "running up the score" crap. You take the 600,000 to come play at the swamp, you know you are going to get run over. I didn't watch a second of that game, and didn't care about it since they (Gators)were playing the SisOfPoorTechA&M.

They have to put up 50+ in that game or people would have said "lackluster" and "drop them in the polls".

It was Senior Day, so you can't blame FLA for playing their starters at their last home game. Then it was freshman roundup, and sorry to say that FLA's '06 class is better than the team that W.Car or most 1-AA teams can put out there on Saturdays.

Why isn't anyone yelling about ND beating on Army? At least Tebow threw as many passes as Leak; Quinn's backup (again, does he exist?) didn't make an attempt v. Army. 34-3 ND with about 12 to go in the 4th and Quinn is still throwing the ball trying to stat pad.

I think OSU starts the season v. Army next year. Can't wait to be challenged by one of ND's conference foes :P

...he cried for a rematch, neutral site, and said that if they played again Michigan would beat OSU since they would make better use of their opportunities on offense, and OSU's D was nothing special...

1) Lose with class2) In a rematch I guess only Michigan would stop making mistakes? (funny how he forgets the 2 fumbles from our center)

I'd say the opposite: it seems to me that OSU had the (much?) better team out there. OSU made several mistakes; UM played mistake-free ball and still lost.

I think the personal foul penalty on #2 on the failed 3rd and 16 attempt in 4th quarter qualifies as a pretty big mistake. That touchdown gave OSU a 2-possession lead. Wipeout that penalty and we have a fantastic finish to a great game.

I think the personal foul penalty on #2 on the failed 3rd and 16 attempt in 4th quarter qualifies as a pretty big mistake.

Yeah, I wrote that poorly. I was thinking more on the offense side of the ball. OSU had a couple bone-headed penalties/mistakes on their defense side as well (also #2, thank God Henne overthrew the open receiver).

I wonder if the SEC is going to be penalized by the human polls for all their whining?

This was not like WVU-UL. Everyone scores and gets yards against WVU and UL. Noone had done either against UM or OSU to this point. So yes, it is very easy to say that it was due to fantastic offenses...and not poor defenses.

I still stand by the shame on Florida. If you reread my original post then you'll see that I criticize Florida for running up the score by still THROWING the ball up 50 points. I have no problem if you keep running the ball to keep the clock moving and still happen to score. But to keep throwing the ball and trying to score is bad sportsmanship. But I will back off of it a little bit as looking at the play by play, in the 4th quarter they did run the majority of the time, except for throwing a touchdown pass to make it 62-0. But I won't say its all good because in the third up 41-0 with about 8 mins left they come out passing. (ironically scoring with a rushing TD)

The computers don't factor in the margin of victory. And before you go off, yes I realize that humans do. But in a human's eyes the difference between 48-0 and 61-0 is not that much against a low quality opponent. Michigan rightfully was criticized for only beating Ball St 17-10. Had they won 35-10 there's no talk.

And this is not an anti-florida thing (this particular arguement). I have zero respect for schools that schedule patsies and then run up big scores unnecessarily. That's why I little respect for some schools who do (or did this): Nebraska, Spurrier's gators, Florida St, Miami, Texas. And tf said it up in post #2 (another thing I hate about big football schools): "Hey Florida called over 40 teams to schedule them...we contacted Army, Navy, Middle Tennessee State, Temple, etc to play 1 game at the Swamp WITHOUT A RETURN DATE" That last part is the part I hate. Grow a pair and play a non-conference game on the road and stop bitching about the lost revenue from not having that 7th or 8th home game. There's 12 games on schedule, it should be 6 home and 6 road.

And Notre Dame was criticized by many when they ran a fake punt/field goal when they were up big on Penn St in September. The next week they got stomped by Michigan. "Trifle not with the football gods"

You do know the reason Florida isn't number 2 in the country right now is because people have said their offense isn't good enough to hang. Yes, it was a I-AA team, and yes it wasn't going to overwhelm the voters. Right now though Florida needs ANYTHING they can get to ahead.

Further, Were you complaining when Kansas was throwing in the closing minutes of the 4th quarter against NWern State?

Kerry Meier pass complete to Jake Sharp for 4 yards to the Kans 40.

Kerry Meier pass complete to Jake Sharp for 3 yards to the Kans 38.

Those were the last two plays of the game.

Finally ignore the fact that there was 2 passes thrown in the 4th quarter out of 14 plays. The 1st pass was the 1st play of the 4th and the second pass was short, WCU just didn't stop Riley Cooper.

About Florida's football scheduling. Ya, we didn't give a return date to UAB or Middle Tennessee State. You know why? Not because we're scared, but because it's not worth the financial loss. There were 90,226 people at the game yesterday to see UF take on WCU. There would be 90,000+ there to watch UF play a taco salad if it were lined up.

Florida has schedule some tough opponents over the next few years (you can't neglect that we play FSU every year) We have tougher "BCS Schools" scheduled in the future; Miami in 2008, USF in 2009 and 2010, Miami in 2013.

Spurrier what-now? Honestly, even though it'd get him out of the conference, which would be good, I'd feel really bad for South Carolina fans--especially with the school just approving a major facilities upgrade.

I know Michigan and Ohio State played a great game and both are good team. If I was a Michigan fan I'd probably be pushing for a rematch too.

However, Michigan got their shot and they lost.

I hear guys like Herbstreit who are very influental on the voting process saying last night that there is no doubt in his mind that Michigan is the number 2 team and deserve a rematch.(I think Herbie is the BEST analyst out there on most occassions)

How do we know USC isn't better, if they win out they will have played a hard enough schedule. How do we know Florida isn't better, if they win out they will have played a tough schedule.

I can see the arguments for ND (loss to Mich) and Ark (loss to USC).

But to just assume Michigan played OSU close, so they have to be #2 and deserve a rematch is just a little too skewed.

Michigan lost, let someone else have a shot at the team that is clearly the best in the country.

Just a jump-off to your Monday analysis: Baltimore isn't very good. They'll get spanked twice by the Steelers. Baltimore will win the division, but the Steelers will be the wild card (#6) and will be FEARED.

Did anyone else notice that if the there is a rematch in the BCS championship, the Rose Bowl will get the first pick of eligible teams to replace OSU and will most likely pick Notre Dame. So you'll most likely have to not only see OSU-Michigan again but also ND-USC.

It looks like what has Michigan still at #2 in the BCS are the close margins with USC in the two polls and the computers keeping UM at #2 in their rankings. My question is whether USC has to beat ND, UM and USC's like opponent, by a greater margin/more convincingly than UM to get a bigger margin in the polls. I say this is going to be tough, and why would a close win over ND, the same team UM dominated, get them any votes from the pollsters?

Secondly, I agree with the philosophy that you can judge a team by its losses. USC's loss to Oregon St. is much more detrimental than Michigan's loss to Ohio St. So, assuming a USC win over ND, you have in order Michigan, USC, Notre Dame, and the SEC Champ.

While I agree about us needing field turf this year, it isn't OSU's fault that Ohio had record rainfall for October (you should see my backyard), and in the end both teams had to play on it.

Did you see the BGSU/Toledo game? THEY needed field turf.

as for a rematch, when you play in a double elim tourney in all sports, there is usually a time when the championship game is a -0 v. -1. in that case, the team with one loss has to win twice to win the whole thing...I'm all for a rematch v. UM on 1/9, provided that if UM pulls out the W we would play again on say, 2/18 to decide it all.

If the idea is to put the best two teams on the field for a championship game, than that would be Michigan/OSU. I think they have showed themselves to be the class of college football. I doubt it will happen and if USC wins out than the argument is moot, but Urban Meyer is just bitter because he has almost no chance to play for a national title.

You know which team has the biggest complaint about the BCS right now? Ohio State. They have defeated all comers this season--including two #2s--they're the only major undefeated team (sorry, Boise State fans). Heck, in the old system, it's already OSU v USC, with the national championship going to the winner. Who needs the BCS?

i saw this coming before the ohio st./michigan game because if michigan won you would have the possibility of a notre dame/michigan rematch which would be stupid cause michigan beat up notre dame or if ohio state won (which is what happend) you woould have the possibility of the win over USC pushed notre dame past michigan for the 2nd spot which would be bad cause michigan would lose to notre dame on paper after they beat them in an acual game

I guess I should take it as a compliment that you are putting KU in the same category as Florida. Thanks! And there's a difference between playing a I-AA in the 1st game of the year with a freshman quarterback than playing a 1-AA as the #3 team in the country at the end of the year. But yeah, I wasn't overly thrilled when KU did that either. But once again, thanks for putting KU in the same class as Florida!

Florida deserves the criticism for their offense, they're not very good. But showing it off against a 1-AA school doesn't show anybody anything. Hell, play a team like Kansas, a low to mid tier Major conference team. That will leave more of an impression than doing it against a 1-AA school.

joe (livonia, mi) - care to explain how I win that award? Is it simply because I criticized Florida? Kind of low standards to the award.

I'd be willing to bet that some no-name local access cable TV channel "journalist" who happens to know a Miami booster was told that they'd like to see a guy like Spurrier run that program and clean it up.

Next thing you know the story has snowballed into Spurrier having already packed his bags and accepting the job yesterday.

OF COURSE Miami would like to have Spurrier. I would imagine any self-respecting school would want a coach the calibur of Spurrier.

Shame on the ESPN journalist that ran with this story and proclaimed it to be fact. Even if the story later ends up being true, the journalism has been shoddy at best.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.